This invention relates to a sound-producing arrangement for motor vehicles having a bass speaker and a hollow acoustic conductor connected to the bass speaker.
It has long been sought to make optimum use of the existing space in a motor vehicle to increase the comfort or convenience of the motor vehicle. To this end, various efforts have been undertaken to design components more compactly or, if possible, to move them into regions of the vehicle in which the structural design provides available space.
Thus, it has been proposed that the bulky bass speaker in a sound producing arrangement be located outside the passenger compartment. The structural modification required for this is disclosed, for example, in German Offenlegungsschrfit No. 33 17 518 in which the bass speaker has an opening to which an acoustic conductor in the form of a pipe is coupled. The sound waves generated in the speaker can be directionally conducted to by this pipe to a remote location. To increase the usable space in the passenger compartment, it has therefore been proposed that the speaker be arranged in another dry area of the vehicle, where the electrical lines of the speaker are protected against troublesome moisture. Such an arrangement is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,175 in which an acoustic sound generating member is located in the vehicle trunk and an acoustic conductor through which sound is conducted into the passenger compartment is provided between the vehicle seat and the vehicle frame. One disadvantage of this proposed arrangement it is that the usable space gained in the passenger compartment is obtained at the expense of usable space in another dry area such as, for example, the trunk. Since the loading volume of the trunk is also a measure of the comfort or convenience of a motor vehicle, moving the speaker out of the passenger compartment into another dry area only results in a displacement and not in an increase in the comfort or convenience of the vehicle.